r paint was as impenetrable as armor. But her personality was a
little tarnished: she was in want of social renovation. She had been
doing and saying the same things for too long a time. London, Cowes,
Homburg, Scotland, Monte Carlo--that had been the round since Hermy was
a baby. Hermy was her daughter, Miss Hermione Newell, who was called in
presently to be shown off to the interviewer and add a paragraph to the
celebration of her mother's charms.

Miss Newell's appearance was so full of an unassisted freshness that
for a moment Garnett made the mistake of fancying that she could fill a
paragraph of her own. But he soon found that her vague personality was
merely tributary to her parent's; that her youth and grace were, in
some mysterious way, her mother's rather than her own. She smiled
obediently on Garnett, but could contribute little beyond her smile and
the general sweetness of her presence, to the picture of Mrs. Newell's
existence which it was the young man's business to draw. And presently
he found that she had left the room without his noticing it.

He learned in time that this unnoticeableness was the most conspicuous
thing about her. Burning at best with a mild light, she became
invisible in the glare of her mother's personality. It was in fact only
as a product of her environment that poor Hermione struck the
imagination. With the smartest woman in London as her guide and example
she had never developed a taste for dress, and with opportunities for
enlightenment from which Garnett's fancy recoiled she remained simple,
unsuspicious and tender, with an inclination to good works and
afternoon church, a taste for the society of dull girls, and a clinging
fidelity to old governesses and retired nurse-maids. Mrs. Newell, whose
boast it was that she looked facts in the face, frankly owned that she
had not been able to make anything of Hermione. "If she has a role I
haven't discovered it," she confessed to Garnett. "I've tried
everything, but she doesn't fit in anywhere."

Mrs. Newell spoke as if her daughter were a piece of furniture acquired
without due reflection, and for which no suitable place could be found.
She got, of course, what she could out of Hermione, who wrote her
notes, ran her errands, saw tiresome people for her, and occupied an
intermediate office between that of lady's maid and secretary; but such
small returns on her investment were not what Mrs. Newell had counted
on. What was the use of pr